Arthur felt Wu Changkong was something of a tragedy.
In the original timeline, once Wu Changkong untangled his inner knot and finally found peace, it had taken him only a handful of years to touch the threshold of the Limit Douluo realm.
Now that was what you'd call a real cheat code.
Wu Changkong was silent for a long time, long enough that the noise and laughter in the private room gradually died down, before he finally spoke.
His voice carried a faint, barely perceptible roughness: "Some things aren't so easily let go of, no matter how much you tell yourself to."
"I know it's hard," Arthur said quietly. "But are you really content with this? Content to stay frozen at the peak of Spirit King for the rest of your life, watching students who once looked up to you surpass you one by one?"
He hadn't approached it from the angle of urging Wu Changkong to release his feelings, to set down whatever he was carrying.
This was the man's first and only love, after all. No one could truly let something like that go.
And honestly, whether a person let go or didn't, it was hard to say which way was right.
Since Wu Changkong couldn't let go, Arthur thought, then fine. Don't.
Arthur decided to deploy what he privately called the Painted Pie technique, and asked: "Do you want to see her again?"
Wu Changkong's body gave a faint tremor. He lifted his gaze to Arthur, pupils shaking: "What do you mean?"
"You still have a chance to see her," Arthur said. "As long as you keep growing stronger, stronger and stronger still."
"Strong enough to cross through time, and meet who she was in the past."
Arthur hadn't read all the way through every arc of Douluo Continent, and wasn't sure whether any cultivation realm could actually resurrect someone from the past.
But just catching a glimpse, just seeing her once, that ought to be possible. Probably.
Wu Changkong's bottleneck came from having no goal. His lover's death had made him feel that life had lost its meaning. So what was the point of cultivating anymore?
Then Arthur would give him a goal. Grow stronger. Grow strong enough to pierce through time and meet the person he'd lost, just one more time.
It was a stretch, sure. But in a world of fantasy cultivation, this kind of thing worked precisely because it was a stretch.
Arthur had lost count of how many protagonists had kept pushing forward because of a lover, ultimately becoming unrivaled under heaven.
"Cross through time..." Wu Changkong's voice trembled to its very core, like a drowning man who had just caught hold of a rope. "Is that... really possible?"
Ever since his lover died and he had let himself fall apart, everyone around him had tried to help. His master, his junior sister, family, friends. Every single one of them had urged him to let go.
But how was he supposed to let go?
Wu Changkong was truly, utterly lost.
Arthur was the first person who hadn't urged him to release anything. The first who not only accepted that Wu Changkong still held on, but actually supported him for it, and gave him something to strive toward because of it.
The weight of that redemption, who could possibly understand.
"In this world, nothing is absolutely impossible." Arthur's tone was calm, yet carried a quality that made people believe him, and he began dispensing his wisdom.
Honestly, Arthur didn't know either.
But what Wu Changkong needed right now was simply something to hold onto.
He needed someone to look him in the eye and say: yes, that's right, if you just keep getting stronger, you'll see her again someday.
"A soul master's path has always been one of defying heaven itself. From Spirit Elder to Douluo, from Douluo to Limit, every step is a matter of breaking the rules. So what is time? Grow strong enough, and one day you'll stand above the rules, and see her one more time."
Wu Changkong clenched his fists until his knuckles went white. The deadness in his eyes was swallowed up by a roaring fire.
He knew what Arthur had said was vague and distant, too grand and too uncertain. But he chose to believe it.
Because he needed this hope.
Years of cultivating like a hollow shell, like a walking corpse, suddenly had new meaning.
Not growing stronger for the sake of growing stronger. But growing stronger for the chance to catch one more glimpse of a figure long since gone.
He drew a slow breath, pressed down the tide of emotion surging through him, and when he spoke again his voice had returned to steadiness, carrying with it a resolve he had never had before: "I understand."
Four simple words, and yet they seemed to lift some crushing weight from his shoulders. Even the flow of soul power around him settled and smoothed out.
He rose to his feet, swept a glance over his students: "Keep eating. I need to step out for a moment. I'll be back."
The next second, he was gone.
He was going to break through to Spirit Sage.
The moment Wu Changkong's figure vanished, the air still trembled with the residual ripple of his soul power, the kind that comes from someone on the verge of a breakthrough pressing it down with everything they have.
The entire private room erupted.
Xie Xie slammed a hand on the table and stared wide-eyed: "What the hell! What was Teacher Wu just doing? He was perfectly fine a second ago, and now he just bolted!"
Tang Wulin also looked completely bewildered. He turned to Arthur: "Arthur, what did you say to him? He seemed... different."
Arthur picked up a pair of chopsticks, chewed a mouthful of food at a leisurely pace, and said with a shrug: "Nothing much. Just gave him something to cultivate toward."
"A goal?" Xu Xiaoyan flicked her twin tails. "A student giving a teacher a goal?"
Truly the world turned upside down.
Gu Yue set down her chopsticks and looked at Arthur steadily: "Did you actually believe what you said to him just now?"
"I was guessing," Arthur said, lifting a shoulder.
Then, out of curiosity, he asked Gu Yue: "Do you think it's possible?"
Gu Yue dropped her gaze and raised a hand to brush a strand of hair back from her ear: "Who knows..."
Just then, a powerful surge of soul power rolled in through the window from outside.
"That's..." Tang Wulin shot to his feet, stunned. "That's Teacher's aura!"
Everyone rushed to the window. In the distance, Wu Changkong hung suspended in the air above the city.
The cloud layer tore open in a long gash, and silver-white radiance cascaded down like a waterfall.
Around him, six soul rings shimmered, and above them a seventh was slowly condensing, radiating a pressure that made the air feel heavy.
"He's breaking through to Spirit Sage!" Xie Xie's jaw dropped. The chicken leg in his hand was completely forgotten.
Xu Xiaoyan pressed her palms together toward Arthur in exaggerated worship: "Arthur, Arthur, what on earth did you say to him? He just broke through like that."
"I want some too, I want some too."
Mid-bow, she found that at some point Na'er had appeared in front of her, eyeing the food protectively.
Xu Xiaoyan clicked her tongue: "Tch."
Gu Yue gazed out at the sky. Something flickered in her eyes, and she said softly: "I see."
"His inner knot isn't gone. But he's found a new obsession to replace it. Sometimes, that kind of obsession carries more force than acceptance ever could."
The words had barely left her lips when Wu Changkong's figure streaked back into the private room like a bolt of light.
The soul power around him had already been reined in. Only a faint trace of frost still clung to the air around him. He looked at Arthur with an expression layered and grave: "Thank you."
Two words, unadorned, and yet each one felt like it weighed a thousand jin.
Arthur waved a hand: "Don't thank me. You did it yourself. Sit down, the food's going cold."
He was in a genuinely good mood right now, and not only because Wu Changkong was his friend.
What made him happier was knowing that he would have one more capable commander on his side in the future.
Wu Changkong's cultivation speed was genuinely terrifying.
After everything that had just happened today, Wu Changkong would absolutely stand firmly in his corner.
Shrek? Never heard of it.
That afternoon, Wu Changkong took Arthur straight to the top-floor private suite of Skysea City's grandest hotel.
Shen Yi was also there. Wu Changkong and she waited outside the door.
Arthur stepped into the suite alone. A woman in a green dress was already there waiting for him.
Her complexion was luminous as snow, and a warm, pure quality surrounded her like a quiet, sacred glow. It was Holy Spirit Douluo, Ya Li.
Oh, and there was an elderly woman beside her, though Arthur didn't pay her much attention.
She looked completely unremarkable, so she was probably Ya Li's attendant or something.
Not important. Probably.
Wu Changkong seemed fine overall, all things considered. Losing someone you loved and still carrying yourself the way he did, that kind of character was genuinely rare.
It could only be said that in Douluo Continent, the less a character was written about, the more normal they tended to turn out.